


Ontology

by graiai



Category: RWBY
Genre: Blood and Injury, Body Modification, Breeding, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Self-Harm, Sharing a Body
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:20:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24715975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/graiai/pseuds/graiai
Summary: I’m sorry,said Oz.You shouldn’t be here.
Relationships: Oscar Pine/Salem (RWBY), Oz & Oscar Pine, Oz/Salem (RWBY), minor or background relationships
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49
Collections: Nonconathon 2020





	Ontology

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HandmaidenOfHorror](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HandmaidenOfHorror/gifts).



Falling felt like standing in a wind corridor of tall brick-front buildings, so many streets in Argus and Mantle Oscar had turned down to be met with the punch of cold air, solid and heavy, whipping at his clothes and hair and making his eyes water.

There was no wind in this cavernous chamber beneath the city of Atlas, but if you’re moving fast enough, still air molecules will become your resistance. The collision feels the same.

Oscar was falling, and if he wasn’t dying yet he certainly would be soon. He couldn't tell if James’—General Ironwood’s—bullet had pierced his chest or only shattered his Aura and had enough impact only to bruise him like the Atlesian army’s riot guns he’d seen used to suppress the people of Mantle supposedly only could. A flash of newfound memory, a young man in white with neat black hair and a simple pistol in his hands. A younger Ironwood, not much older than Oscar, with a comfortable, military stance. _Are you sure?_ he asked, and Oscar felt the muscle memory of laughing with a familiar voice which was not his own. _Just shoot me already, James. We’ll see whose Aura falls first._

They were friends. No, more than that—this was a training room in one of the huntsman academies, a bright screen on the wall showing a split-screen Aura monitor, one of those really early digital ones. Oscar (Ozpin) could feel the tightness of his skin under the tape keeping the Aura level sensor in place on his upper arm. They were partners, they were training together, and James had his gun leveled at Ozpin’s chest and Oscar was still falling but it felt so far away.

James’ aim faltered. _I would feel better if you had a weapon._

_That would defeat the purpose of the exercize. Semblance against Semblance. Don’t look, just shoot._

James shot. General Ironwood, no longer a fresh-faced seventeen year old but with greying hair and his arm in a sling, _he_ shot too, but it wasn’t with his eyes closed, with any trace of hesitation, and in Ozpin’s memory that bullet did nothing, absorbed into the energy field of the extension of Ozpin’s soul outside of his skin. In the memory, he grinned, and engaged his own Semblance. But Oscar didn’t have one yet to engage, and even if he had it would be worthless with his Aura shattered, and he was falling, he was _dying_ , and that flash of memory meant Oz was back.

Oscar’s fingers curled of their own volition—or, no, of Oz’s—around the grip of the cane. Depressed the trigger, and—

—Oscar was no longer falling. He was laying on his back on cool, dark stone, and Oz remembered dread, and pain, and pain, and his thoughts skittered away from details. Oscar had only the impression of clicking heels, and did not know if the words were only thought or spoken but Oz was saying only _no, no, no, no, no_.

_I’m sorry,_ said Oz. _You shouldn’t be here._

Oscar was throwing pebbles at the wall of their cell. He didn’t know how long it had been, but everything was silent and outside their little slit of a window—not even barred, it was so small—was only darkness. “Where _is_ here?” he asked.

He wasn’t angry. He was just tired. His chest hurt, and it was hard to breathe; once Oz had settled and Oscar could think of anything other than that panic, desperate bone-deep terror that seized their shared limbs, getting his jacket and his shirt off had revealed no entry wound, but pressing exploratory fingers to the source of the sharpest pain had Oscar gasping and Oz saying calmly, _Broken rib. It will heal, given time._ Behind the words were a sadness that suggested they did not have time.

_Evernight. The birthplace of the Grimm._

“Oh,” said Oscar. “How did we—?” They had been falling, and Oz had activated something within the cane, and now they were here, and Oz was terrified, and the cane was gone.

_I don’t know. Salem must have…it would have to have been lifetimes ago. I have no idea. Oscar—_

Oscar cut him off. “What do we do? Now that we’re here, what do we do?” It got very, very quiet in his head. “ _Oz._ ”

 _There’s something on the stone beneath your hand._ There was. A barely-there unevenness, some thin layer that flaked beneath Oscar’s fingers.

“So what?”

_It’s too dark to see it. Can you bring your fingers up to your nose?_

Rolling his eyes, Oscar did; even with his vision by now adjusted to the dark, he could barely make out the shapes of his own fingers. Feeling stupid, he sniffed them. “Smells like… metal.” A horrible thought. “Blood?”

 _Mine_ , Ozpin confirmed.

Oscar’s stomach churned. Pushing down dread he hoped desperately was only paranoia, he said in a single breath, “You’ve been here before! This exact room! That’s—that’s good, that means you’ve gotten out of it before, and we can get out of it again.” He knew Oz could tell he didn’t even believe it himself.

 _Your predecessor,_ Oz said quietly, gently, _killed himself to get me out of this cell._

It felt like forever before anyone came to get them, but it couldn’t have been more than a couple days—Oscar had learned hiking with team RWBY through the tundra of Northern Mistral how long it took for his stomach to go from rumbling to aching, from aching to silent, and from silent to stinging pain. It was still silent.

The sound of footsteps were faint, light sandals maybe. Oz didn’t even react to the sound, though he must have heard it. Oscar wanted to scream, or, or—he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He wanted _Oz_ to do something. He wanted his Semblance to manifest. He wanted to be anything other than the liability he so clearly was.

He wondered if, in that part of himself Oz could seal off from Oscar’s awareness, Oz wished he would just kill himself already.

When the door slid open—or the head-height slit in the door slid open, like their cell was in the solitary confinement unit of a prison—the person on the other side wasn’t Salem at all but a girl with green hair who had to cling to the frame, probably standing on her toes, to peek over. She stared, eyes wide. Behind her, a dim light flickering, probably candlelight. It burned Oscar’s eyes after so long in the dark.

“Uh,” said Oscar. “Hello?” He would say _help us out of here?_ except there was only one of him, so he’d look crazy, and if this girl was here at all, in this dungeon, in Evernight, in the World of Darkness… that meant she probably wanted them there.

“…Ozma?”

“If you insist, I guess.” He wasn’t going to push it. “My name’s Oscar.”

“Emerald,” offered Emerald, distantly. “You’re… really young.”

“You’re not that much older than me,” Oscar pointed out. He couldn’t see her, really—not in the dim light—but he could guess from her voice and the way she dyed her hair.

A long pause, and then she said, “I guess not,” and, “I’m supposed to make sure you’re not starving to death. Here.” She tossed a few items through the slit, and from the sound of their collision with the stone floor, they were probably a water bottle and a couple granola bars. “I don’t know how long you’re gonna have to make that last,” she warned, a note in her voice Oscar couldn’t read, and then she slid shut the window in the door again.

Her footfalls slowly faded out of range, leaving them in silent darkness.

The next time someone came, it was three-quarters into the second granola bar, and halfway into the water bottle. Oscar didn’t know how long. He slept a lot, and his bones hurt—his broken rib especially, but all of them, really. A stone floor made for a poor bed, and no matter how long he slept he still felt tired, bone-deep and creeping in from… maybe somewhere else. Maybe the same place that had his whole body freeze up at the _click clack click_ of high heels in the hall.

_Joy at that sound, his lips curling up into the brightest of grins. His love, so long in the timelessness of the God of Light’s domain he thought her lost to him forever and still giddy for every glance he gets of her, no less in love for the new stark white of her hair, the bloodstain-red of her eyes._

_It takes too long, far, far too long, for the joy of seeing her to fade, and dread to fill in the gaps that joy has left. His love never leaves, not for their daughters’ murder, not for his own, not for the first time she catches him like a stray and pins him down and rides his cock as he begs her to stop, as she curls over him and kisses his neck like nothing has changed, as he comes inside of her and he strains at his bonds to hold her close even as he cries._

_It takes far too many dead children (both hers and only his, his children and grandchildren she hunts down for their silver eyes), dead hosts, destroyed societies, for the joy of her nearness to fade. Countless lives lost—all those so-called remnants Salem thinks are so worthless, building their lives on the bone-dust of their world, their people, not that they much cared for them when they both lived—and the tortures she visits all but an afterthought, because he deserves it, deserves her hate, deserves anyone,_ everyone’s _hate for all that he has wrought, and his only regret when she rapes him is that it brings innocents into their game._

Dread now, only dread. It froze up their shared body, and when Salem entered the cell all Oscar could do was close his eyes against the searing brightness of the candlelight—it hurt so much, the flickering inconsistency burning even through his eyelids—as Oz murmured _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,_ and Oscar didn’t know if he was begging forgiveness of Oscar, of Salem, or of the whole world.

He was silent, when Salem sat down beside him, facing him, feet tucked under her legs. Oz said nothing to Oscar and Oscar said nothing to Salem.

Salem said, “Hello, dear,” and a cold finger tipped up his chin to catch his mouth in a kiss he couldn’t pull away from. He felt like a trapped animal and her other hand, her long fingers were undoing the closures of his trousers, cupping him in her hand, cool even through his briefs.

All his words dried up on his tongue, all his thoughts scattered to the corners of Remnant, Oscar—Oz—the both of them let her. Consciousnesses interwoven in a way only decades or terror could achieve, they were as one mind and all they could do was withstand this. A gentle hand on his shoulder pushed Oscar to lay back upon the stone, and Salem dragged his trousers and underwear halfway down his hips. She took his soft cock in hand with what must have been spit on her palm for the friction, pumped him in a perfunctory manner so at odds with the way her other hand caressed his cheek, thumbing the corner of his lips.

When he was hard— _it happens_ , Oz promised like he needed to convince himself, _it’s only stimulation, it doesn’t mean anything, Oscar_ —Salem got up on her knees over him and guided herself down onto his cock, her fingers holding open the lips of her wet cunt. She lowered herself down on him and rocked, and she held his face in her hands and told him, “You have such beautiful eyes in this body. I hope they take after you.” It was too dark to see them, surely, but Salem was so far from human anymore maybe the darkness didn’t matter.

She dragged his hand to her belly, meaningful, and Oscar felt sick. Oz felt desolate. “We have a beautiful son now,” Salem said. “He’s just started walking. If you can behave yourself, maybe I’ll let you meet him.”

“Will you fuck him too?” Oscar didn’t know who said it—they both thought it. It didn’t matter. Salem was riding his—their?—cock and Oz had _said_ there was no way out of here but death and he didn’t want to die. Not yet. Not yet. Not even this could make him want to.

Salem scoffed—not quite a laugh, and no humor to be found in it. Churlish, she said, “Of course I will. Oh, don’t look at me like that. My looks aside, I’m not a monster. Tell me, have I ever mistreated _you_?”

_Shattered legs, a palace on fire, dragging himself through a pool of his own blood as Salem stalked toward him and the girls—they were no longer crying, and there could be only one reason why._

_Salem’s foot on his throat, one of her abominable creations inside of him, tearing him to shreds, and he had no breath upon which to beg her forgiveness._

_Those black hands of darkness coming up from the ground, vile and burning where they hold Ozpin’s wrists, his shins, his ankles. He can turn his head to watch Leo step uncomfortably forward, but Salem has made him prove his loyalty and prove it he shall because his fear has always led him, and Ozpin tells him only, “I understand.”_

“Me? No.” It was Oz who spoke, and as much as he found he disagreed, Oscar was glad he’d taken the initiative, because _he_ couldn’t have said anything coherent, only _please_ and _I don’t…_ “I deserve all this and worse for leaving you at all. But Oscar doesn’t deserve this. Neither did A—” and he cut himself off, like it hurt too much to say his name, all but forgotten by anyone but Oz himself, “—any of the rest of them.”

Salem smacked him. “They’re nothing,” she sneered. “Malformed little abominations and you _owe it to them_ to fix this world. You know it, too, or you never would have given those two little birds the gift that you did.” Her other hand was between her own thighs, Oscar could feel it. Touching herself as she rocked on his cock, and he wanted to fight but all Oz seemed to want to do was self-flagellate and all that was left for Oscar was to keep his eyes shut tight and pretend he couldn’t feel the tears leaking out the corners of his eyelids, or how close he was to coming.

“Fix the _world_ , yes. But just because humanity is lacking doesn’t mean they need to be _fixed_. There’s nothing wrong with them as they are.” Leave it to Oz to deliver a lecture while he was being raped. As if he hadn’t clearly told Salem this again and again to absolutely no avail.

Salem kissed him to shut him up, forcing her tongue into Oscar’s mouth, and some instinct had him kissing her back, some part of him that said _play along and it’s easier_. Oscar thought it might have been the ghost of an old host. He didn’t want to think about himself sticking around after all this for eternity.

She stayed perched there on top of him even after he came, kissing him like a lover, like he wasn’t a kid crying underneath her, and he could feel his come leaking out of her as his cock softened inside of her, dripping sticky on his belly. Finally, lips to lips, she murmured, “Tomorrow, I expect better,” and then she rose.

Oscar stopped counting the days in chunks of granola and sips of water, and started counting them in rapes. Salem came to him every day until she disappeared for one and a half granola bars—four days, he guessed, statistically—and then every day again. Emerald, when she delivered the rations, always seemed uncomfortable, but never enough to try and stop it; Oscar knew the fear he felt, the all-consuming self defense mechanism that said _submit_ , and couldn’t find it in himself to blame her.

He met his—Oz’s—son, a toddler with a smile like sunshine and a million heartwrenching questions like _wha sunshy?_ All Oscar could think of was the retro Heroes of Remnant trading cards his aunt had given him for his eleventh birthday, his dad’s collection before he’d passed, and the Vytal Festival Tournament pack that had a young Ozpin printed on cheap enough cardstock his silver hair was just the blank paper. This kid would look like that when his mom raped him to give him more brothers and sisters; he’d look like that when she made him fuck his baby sister, if that was was Oscar gave her.

He still didn’t want to die, but he came close sometimes.

He thought she’d stop fucking him when she was pregnant; Oscar wasn’t her husband, and Oz was such a wreck even when he was fronting that he only ever made things worse, either frozen worse than Oscar or fighting with every bit of ideology at his disposal—nothing Salem wanted to hear, and half the time had his mouth stuffed full of the fingers of a black brine hand formed of Grimm sorcery or something even worse for his efforts. But maybe Oz wasn’t the only one who still missed the good old days, rose-tinted as their glasses had to be, because even when her belly grew she’d pull Oscar to her side and card her fingers through his hair, jerk him off just to make a mess of their thighs.

She never cried, but sometimes she reminisced. “We were their gods,” she told Oscar. “We can be their gods again.”

“They don’t need gods,” he murmured, and maybe he was losing himself, because he didn’t even consider saying _we_ until after. “They need hope. That’s what makes people better.”

What she did to him afterward didn’t bear repeating.

One day, not long after their daughter was born (a beautiful little thing, Salem’s white hair and indeed Oscar’s hazel eyes, and he sobbed when he saw her and didn’t stop until he fell asleep), Emerald gave Oscar a granola bar with a razor blade taped to the back. He cut his fingers on it something awful in the dark.

 _Your predecessor killed himself to get me out of this cell,_ Oz had told him. He had felt the blood himself. He still didn’t want to die. But he didn’t want to be used again.

“I’m gonna do something really dumb,” he announced to the cell a few days later, out loud though by now most of his conversations with Oz were indistinguishable from his own thought process, tangled together as they’d become. “You can, um.” He hesitated. “You can use your magic to heal stuff, right?”

An answering hesitation from Oz, and then a _Yes,_ that meant _Do I want to know?_ And he didn’t, so Oscar didn’t tell him. He could dig deep enough into the part of their mind they thought of as Oscar’s if he really couldn’t wait a couple minutes.

Holding the razor blade against his own flesh was—terrifying, maybe more than it should have been, or at least more than it made sense to be. He knew what was coming, more or less, and that’s something he could never say about Salem’s visits. His grasp was slippery with his blood. Oz was silent. He knew what Oscar was doing by now, and he—well, he wasn’t offering any criticism, which was either tacit consent or bog-standard Oz bullshit, deciding he was such a scourge upon his hosts that he couldn’t criticize even the worst possible choices.

Oscar let himself believe it was consent. He’d hated Oz for a long while, but it was hard to keep on hating someone when you knew how much they hated themself, and even harder when you knew _why_. And they were stuck with each other, anyway. Hating him wasn’t productive.

He counted down from a deep breath, _three, two, one_ , and with a firm hold on his testes that had the skin stretched taut as he could manage, Oscar swiped the razor blade, pressing it into the skin with shaking hands and bloody fingers. Tore through—he didn’t even know what, he’d never paid that much attention in health class. Important stuff, is what mattered.

Castration made you infertile. That’s why they did it to tomcats. Keep the population down. It was in the public interest.

Blood loss hit harder and faster than he expected, or maybe it was the shock. Part of them—his balls, that is—were still connected by a string of tissue and even in the total darkness of their cell there was white light behind his eyes, a cold sort of feeling in the back of his head like water sloshing inside his skull. He couldn’t feel his hands, or. He could, but like they were just as attached as his testes were: barely, and he didn’t know how to control them.

 _Let me,_ Oz murmured, too calm, and Oscar passed over the reins, or Oz took them from loose metaphorical hands. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. Steady hands gripped the remaining tissue and tore through it with the razor blade, then pinched all the remaining skin together between the palm of his hand and his fingers. He pressed hard, and a feeling Oscar couldn’t name as nerve damage or magic went through him in a cascade, and he thought he wasn’t bleeding anymore but awareness was slipping through his fingers like sand. They were out of food, so Emerald would find him first, probably, and maybe she would help them. Maybe she wouldn’t. He couldn’t know, only hope.

He let himself fall into unconsciousness.


End file.
